In the lead-up to the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the rapes of young girls in Sydney's west by a gang of teenagers led by Bilal Skaf attracted widespread publicity and stirred up ethnic tensions.

Now a provocative new work being performed at the Sydney Writers' Festival explores the events and the impact it had on young men growing up in the area.

#Three Jerks is a devised performance from Sweatshop, a literacy group based at the University of Western Sydney's Bankstown campus.

Creator Michael Mohammed Ahmad says the work is not a defence of what happened, but a chance to pull apart some of the broader issues affecting society.

"In no way do we work towards taking away from the heinous nature of crimes and incidents that took place in Australia. But (we're) trying to approach those issues in a complex manner," he said.

Mr Ahmad was 14 at the time of the rapes and says they had a profound affect on him during his formative years.

"The only kind of sentiment that we experienced in this country was one of distrust, of fear, of suspicion because the media sensationalism that took place identified not only particular criminals but almost anybody that came from the same cultural and religious background as somehow connected and implicit in those crimes," he said.

"Any encounter that I had at that point in the year 2000 and onwards usually was brought back to my cultural and religious identity and usually in a derogatory context - a context of are you a rapist?"

The work features three interconnected stories of young men living in Sydney's west and how the crimes were used to denigrate the western suburbs as a whole.

Co-writer Luke Carman says their work is being deliberately radical and provocative which is why they call themselves Three Jerks.

Any encounter that I had at that point in the year 2000 and onwards usually was brought back to my cultural and religious identity and usually in a derogatory context - a context of are you a rapist?

#Three Jerks creator Michael Mohammed Ahmad

"There's an Australian sense of humour that exists in western Sydney where people make fun of themselves to the point where they're no longer sure of whether they're making a joke or not," he said.

"So I think we called it Three Jerks because we acknowledge that that's what we are. It's a joke but at the same time we're not exactly sure whether we're kidding or not."

As an Anglo Australian growing up in Sydney's south-west, he too felt the full force of the media outcry.

"We blamed Arabs and we blamed Islam and I think that as an Anglo Australian, as a young man, I had no problems internalising that message," he said.

Fellow collaborator Peter Polites says the writing draws upon oral traditions of storytelling but also incorporates the vernacular of today's youth.

"You'll see that we've picked up the traditions of not only our ancestors and our families but we've also picked up the language of pop culture and how that's interpreted," he said.

Skaf and eight others were convicted of the crimes that took place in Greenacre, Bankstown and Beverly Hills.

Skaf will not be eligible for release until 2033. In recent months, two other gang members - Mohammed Sanoussi and "H" - were released on parole.

Mr Ahmad says the coverage around the releases reignited in him the same feelings of fear, distrust and suspicion.

"It said to me that really we haven't moved very far over the last 15 years. We haven't really begun to address these issues in a more complex way," he said.